Chapter VI.The Inquiry in the Dining-Room“No one has found the key, I suppose?” was Allport’s first question as soon as Miss Summerson had shut the door. “The maid would have reported it if she had found it when she swept out the dispensary this morning, I suppose, Miss Hanson?”“Yes, but if you like I will go and ask to make sure,” Ethel replied.“No, don’t bother to do that.”Then, after a pause, he asked, “And which of you were in the dispensary last night after Miss Summerson locked the cupboard at three o’clock? Were you?” He asked each of us the question individually in turn, and it transpired that Ethel and The Tundish alone had passed from the hall into the dispensary itself, though I had been in the consulting-room at the time of the accident to the boy.I began to think that the inquiry would be a lengthy one if each question were to be repeated so monotonously, but he seemed to take an enormous interest in our replies, and to wait with a kind of ghoulish excitement after each, “And were you?” as though he were hoping to catch us in the admission of an indiscretion. I have often thought of that hour in the stifling dining-room at Dalehouse as the most tense and exciting of my experience. The little man, seated at the end of the table, was angrily determined to search out the truth. In deadly earnest he looked at each speaker as one by one we answered his numerous questions, but he found time to glance swiftly round the table now and again to see what impression this question or that had made on the rest of us—then back again, like some hawk with its prey. While he seemed to have no method or order in framing his questions it soon occurred to me that a great many of them were put, not so much for the purpose of getting any answer, or even information, but rather to see what the effect of the question itself on the rest of us might be.The doctor sat bland and impassive through it all. Nothing disturbed him. His replies came out suave and sure. Never once did he hesitate; not once did he give the impression of being on the defensive. And I think it was this quality in his replies that rather accentuated the feelings of all of us as we sat unhappily round the table. To Ethel, I feel sure, and to me as well, his calm and his dignity were splendid. To Kenneth, I am equally sure, they were nothing but an additional proof of guilt. I could gage his every thought—no one but a villain could keep thus collected in the face of such suspicion—innocence, surely, would have shown more concern. And Ethel, how could she? She seemed to hang on the doctor’s every word. From him to Allport, as answer followed question, she turned her pretty head—hurt when the questions were brutal and direct, proud and glad for the dignified reply. He a murderer, a poisoner, and she the girl whom he loved—I believe his soul was sick with jealousy.And Margaret and Ralph, I could see, thought him guilty too—but they were more aloof—they did not condemn and they had some sort of feeling of pity.There we sat through a long, long hour, the blinds drawn against the streaming sun, the pleasant garden noises coming in through the open windows. The clock ticked the time slowly and leisurely away, and once there was the sound of tramping feet on the stairs, as they carried Stella’s body down to take it to the mortuary. The room was at fever heat and our pulses raced as Allport tortured us each in turn.“And your key, Dr. Wallace, where do you keep it?”“Here in my waistcoat pocket.”“Not a very safe place surely?”“I have always found it so.”“You are sure it has not been out of your possession?”“Yes, I could swear to that.”“What do you do with it at night?”“I don’t do anything with it. I leave it in the pocket.”“And you really think it safe to carry a key of such importance loose in your waistcoat pocket?”“Yes, I think it is as safe there as it would be anywhere else.”“Humph, and now I want you to tell me about these,” taking out his pocketbook and unfolding the notice The Tundish had printed and the two duplicates he and I had printed later on at breakfast.He turned to the doctor for information and was told in detail about the practical joke, about our conversation in the garden, and about Kenneth’s inquiry at the breakfast table. The Tundish spoke simply and to the point, omitting nothing, not even our arrangement to lie like troopers in our efforts to mystify the rest.“Humph, it all sounds rather extraordinary, you know, Doctor, not what I should have expected of you somehow. I take it there was no ulterior motive?”“No, it was a practical joke and nothing more.”“You don’t think it necessary to tell the truth then, I gather, on every occasion?”“No, I don’t,” The Tundish answered pleasantly. “Come now, Mr. Allport, you know that that is not quite a fair implication. I maintain that any one might have arranged the joke, and then have agreed to bluff it out as Mr. Jeffcock and I did. You might just as reasonably call a man a liar and a cheat because he was fond of a game of poker.”But Allport took no notice of his protest and turned to Kenneth. “You, I understand, conducted this inquiry. The doctor has confessed that he was responsible for the notice and for the disturbed beds. How was it that you failed to find him out? What did you find out?”“We came to no definite conclusion at all, but I wasn’t then aware that the doctor and Mr. Jeffcock only tell the truth when it happens to suit them,” Kenneth answered with an ugly sneer. “We were divided, but we all felt sure that it was one of the two. I think it is rather significant, however, that Dr. Wallace took good care to point out in great detail that any one of us had the opportunity to be alone up-stairs at some time or other during the evening without being missed. He went out of his way to prove it, and now I know why,” he added, turning to the doctor with a scowl.Ethel half sobbed, “Oh, how abominable of you,” but Allport would brook no interruption, and rapped the table with his knuckles directly she opened her mouth.“You think he stressed the point?” he asked, turning once more to Kenneth.“Yes, I do.”“And what have you got to say about it, Mr. Jeffcock?”I replied that I considered that The Tundish had made an entirely accurate statement about the whole affair, and that while I agreed with Kenneth that it was he who had pointed out that we all had the chance of doing it, it was in my opinion the natural outcome of our plot to confuse the rest, and that I could not agree that any particular emphasis had been given to the point.I was surprised to see that Allport paid really serious attention to Kenneth’s horrible suggestion. He sat frowning, drawing little squares and designs in a note-book he had placed on the table before him when the inquiry began, and in which from time to time he had jotted something down, while we sat round the table watching and anxiously waiting for what he would say.“Yes, I think it is rather important,” he said at length, looking up from his book and down the table to where The Tundish sat facing him, his chair tilted back and his knees against the table edge. “Would you mind repeating the arguments you used?”“But I’ve already admitted that it was I who stuck up the notice and played the silly practical jokes.”“Yes, you have, Doctor, but that is not the point. The implication is that first you poisoned Miss Palfreeman, then you played the practical joke, as you call it, and that at breakfast time this morning you went out of your way to prove that any of the rest of the party also had the opportunity to play the joke, in order to establish it clearly beforehand that any one of you could have added the poison to the sleeping draft as well. Now please repeat, as nearly word for word as you can, what you said at breakfast time that has caused these strange and unpleasant fancies to come to Mr. Dane.”At first I thought the doctor was going to refuse—he seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second—and then, leaning forward with his elbows on the table, he repeated the bantering arguments he had adopted earlier in the day. He not only repeated the words, but he seemed to create the atmosphere of the earlier scene as well. He put the clock back somehow. We were all sitting round the breakfast table again and he was teasing Kenneth—I could almost smell the coffee and the bacon.Even little Allport was impressed. “Yes, that certainly sounds realistic, and innocent enough,” he laughed, but he went over it all again, nevertheless, pausing to make notes in his book, and asking each of us in turn to corroborate the statements the doctor had made. It was ultimately established that he had given Annie the medicine to take up-stairs immediately before he joined the other five—Stella, Margaret, Ethel and the two boys—in the dining-room for supper. I had been alone up-stairs while I changed, and could have added the poison either then, or later, when as a matter of fact I was wandering about in the garden just prior to the accident. Kenneth and Ralph had been together the whole evening—at least so they both said. It transpired that the two had gone to a neighboring hotel for a drink, an admission they made with some little shame, pleading the heat as their excuse. Hanson, I should explain, is rather a strict teetotaler and alcoholic drinks are taboo at Dalehouse. Ethel was alone in the surgery wing for about ten minutes after the accident, clearing up the mess. Margaret had been left by herself in the basement all the time that Ethel was occupied up-stairs.Having sorted out all our movements to his satisfaction, and having completed his notes about them, he got up and rang the bell at the side of the fireplace behind him. When Annie appeared to answer it, he surprised us all by asking her whether the little heap of washing he had noticed on the dresser, when he had searched the basement, was the clothes that had been ironed the night before, and whether they had yet been put away.“No, sir, they’re still on the dresser.”“Fetch them.”She brought them and put them before him on the table, and he turned them over one by one, including the undergarments about which Ethel and Margaret had both been so modest. “It certainly does not look like a two hours’ job even allowing for the iron and the accident—I agree with you there, Doctor—not on piece-work pay anyhow,” he concluded as he came to the socks at the bottom of the pile.“But where is the brother to this?” he asked sharply, holding up an odd sock that I recognized as one of mine. It was marked on the inside and he noticed it at once. “F. H. J.; which of you two ladies ironed Mr. Jeffcock’s socks?”We all looked at Ethel and Margaret, and they at each other. Neither of them spoke and then they both began to speak at once. “You did, I thi——”Finally, though neither of them seemed very certain about it, it was agreed that probably Ethel had ironed that particular pair, though she denied most emphatically having either brought the odd sock up-stairs, or put it away. The Tundish agreed that she had not brought it up with her from the basement by accident, when he called for her to help him with the boy, and both Annie and cook on being called and questioned asserted that they had neither of them touched it. At length Allport gave up in disgust his attempt to locate it, and picking up the heap of clothes, threw them angrily into one of the armchairs that stood at the side of the fireplace.Having done so, he seemed to make a new start, and turned to me. “Now I want you to tell me honestly, Mr. Jeffcock, weren’t you just a little surprised when the doctor told you what he had done? Didn’t you think it rather peculiar that a man of his age and position should play tricks of that description?”I had to confess that I had.“And what made you add what you did to the notice—‘Dark deeds are done at night’?”“I don’t know why I made the addition.”“But it seems to me such a peculiar thing that you should have picked on those words. Did you know then that the bedrooms had been upset?”“No.”“Did you know that Miss Palfreeman was dead when you made the addition?”“No, we none of us knew till breakfast time this morning.”“Possibly not—possibly one of you did.”I could have twisted his ugly little neck.“You knew that Dr. Wallace had lived in China?”“Yes.”“And Miss Palfreeman?”Now I had been wondering whether I ought to disclose the conversation between Stella and The Tundish that I had overheard, and whether I was right or wrong, I don’t know, but I had made up my mind that I would say nothing about it—at any rate for the present.In the first place, it seemed to me that if it were deceitful of me to keep my knowledge from the police, it would be still more dishonest to tell them what I had heard. It was a private and confidential conversation, which quite unwittingly I had been able to overhear by reason of my abnormal powers. I had promised Allport to keep nothing relevant hidden, along with the rest, including The Tundish, but how was I to know that it was really relevant? Might I not have misinterpreted what I did hear? Those gaps in Stella’s speech, in how many different ways could they not be filled? Again, was it my business or part of my undertaking to report half-heard remarks? If it had been something to do with Stella’s death, then surely it was a matter for The Tundish, and he, God knows, was heavily enough involved without my going out of my way to add to his burden by ranging myself at the side of Kenneth.And so, right or wrong, I decided to keep the overheard conversation to myself, but I did not quite realize that my resolve would necessitate the lie direct. I soon found out, however, that it did, and that as soon as I had told the first I had to back it with another.“I don’t know whether she knew it or not,” I ventured, in reply to his question, after a moment’s hesitation.“Please don’t play with me, sir!” the little man almost shouted. “You know perfectly well that I was asking if you knew that Miss Palfreeman had lived in China.”“No, I don’t know that!”“That I was asking if you knew that Miss Palfreeman had lived in China?”“No, that she had ever lived in China,” I lied as boldly as I could.“Did you know that they had quarreled?”“No,” I lied again.He stared at me and I was not surprised, for even to me it had sounded too loud a denial and somehow unconvincing. He continued to stare, and I could feel the questioning glances of the rest, as I kept my gaze defiantly on his, but he made no further comment.“Perhaps you will tell us about it, Doctor?”“No, I don’t think I shall,” The Tundish replied pleasantly. “All I can tell you is this. Miss Palfreeman’s father was in Shanghai for two years while I was resident there. He was representing the Foreign Office in a political mission. We became acquainted and our acquaintance grew into friendship. Then we quarreled. In fact it was largely on account of our quarrel that I left China when I did. But I never at any time had any difference or quarrel with Miss Palfreeman. She naturally enough took her father’s side in our dispute. I don’t know whether she knew any of the facts—the facts, I mean, from her father’s view-point. Of the true facts only myself and one other were ever aware. Anyhow, she quite incorrectly thought that I ruined her father, and she disliked me accordingly. We only referred to the matter once during her visit here, and that was on the evening before her death, when I tried to persuade her to forgive the past. Her father committed suicide, but if necessary I can prove conclusively that I had nothing whatever to do with the trouble that came to him. All I can tell you now is that I made a certain solemn promise that I intend to keep. That promise makes it impossible for me to tell you more than I have already.”“We are to accept your word for it then, Doctor, that this time, at any rate, you are telling the truth?” the detective sneered.“That, I must leave to your own discretion,” The Tundish answered with a pleasant smile, quite impervious to the little man’s insinuations.Then there followed a battle royal between the two of them, and the ugly little spitfire was for a full ten minutes persuasive, cutting, rude, and threatening in turn, but the doctor sat unmoved through it all. He refused even to answer “Yes” or “No” to the many leading questions that were put to him, and beyond saying that he had no idea that Miss Palfreeman was the girl he had known in Shanghai until he met her at the club, and that she was about eighteen years old when he returned to England, he replied, “I have nothing more to say” to every question.Eventually Allport gave up the unequal contest and turned his attention to Ethel. How long had she known Dr. Wallace? Did she know that he knew Stella before she asked her to stay at Dalehouse for the tournament? Some of his questions were brutal, I thought, and seemed to be framed with a view to causing the maximum of annoyance, and I felt that it was only the realization of the danger in which the doctor stood that made her able to bear the ordeal.“I understand you are engaged to be married to Mr. Dane?”“No.”“No? But I certainly understood that you were.”Ethel crimsoned and was silent, and Kenneth burst out with an angry, “But I say, that can’t have anything to do with Miss Palfreeman’s death.”Allport held up his fat podgy little hand in angry protest. “That you must please leave for me to decide. Either you must answer my questions or we must deal with the matter in a more formal manner.” This he said with a threatening glance at the doctor.There was silence, and he continued.“Come now, Miss Hanson, why did you break off your engagement?”Poor Ethel was very near to tears, but she started her answer bravely. “We differed over Dr. Wallace—Mr. Dane objected—oh! But I can’t tell you.” It was too much for her and she put her elbows on the table and buried her face in her hands. It was all ghastly, and I felt that a public inquiry could not be worse than these intimate exposures. But Allport was immovable, inexorable.“You are very fond of Dr. Wallace, then?”Ethel nodded, but did not look up.“Very fond? Does that mean you are in love with him?”“No,” she whispered.I could bear it no longer. “Murder or no murder,” I said, “you’ve no right to ask questions like that.”Allport held up his hands in despair. “You don’t understand—you simply can’t understand the position you are all of you in. Yes, all of you. Suppose Dr. Wallace were brought to trial, what sort of questions do you imagine the counsel for the defense would ask you? Isn’t it better to talk to me here privately? You don’t imagine I enjoy this kind of thing, I suppose?”I heard Kenneth mutter, “I’m not so sure of that,” but The Tundish pacified him with a genial:“Yes, Mr. Allport, you are right of course, but you can’t expect us to enjoy it very much either. I am sure you had better tell him anything you can,” he concluded, turning to Ethel.“But you are not willing to follow your own advice, Doctor?” Allport snapped.“I told you all I was at liberty to tell you. I didn’t resent any of your questions.”The little detective shrugged his shoulders.“Well, then, Miss Hanson, I’m to understand that you broke off your engagement with Mr. Dane because you differed from him over this unfortunate affair, and that you are very fond of the doctor here, but that you are not in love with him. Is that correct?”“I suppose it’s near enough,” Ethel whispered.“Now I want you to answer this very carefully. Had you noticed anything between the doctor and Miss Palfreeman? Had you any reason at all to suspect that while she disliked the doctor, he might have had other feelings with regard to her?”“No. It’s quite absurd. He hardly knew her.”“Pardon me, he has just informed us that for two years her father was one of his most intimate friends. You are not asking me to believe that he hardly knew the daughter, who was eighteen at the time?”Then leaning over the table, and speaking very slowly, he asked her, “Did you know where the Chinese poison was kept? Exactly which bottle it was in, I mean?”“Yes.”“And roughly what its action was?”“Yes.”“So that if you had found the key Miss Summerson says she lost, you would have had no difficulty in getting at it and using it in—the—way—it—has—been—used?”“No, I suppose not,” Ethel replied bravely but going as white as a sheet.Next he turned quite suddenly to Margaret. “And, what were the papers you burned in your bedroom grate, Miss Hunter?”“I didn’t burn any papers.”“Oh! Please think carefully now. Surely you did burn something. I found the charred pieces there, myself, and Annie has told me she cleaned out the grate only the morning before. What was it that you burned?”“I didn’t burn anything.”“Not a photograph, for instance?”“I didn’t burn anything at all. I really didn’t.”“Then you expect me to believe that some one else went into your room for the purpose of burning paper in that particular grate?”Margaret made no reply to this, and Allport went on to question her closely about where she had lived in Sheffield. At which school had she taught? Why did she leave it? Did she have to work for her living? Then there followed a whole string of rapid questions concerning her previous knowledge of Ralph. How far apart did they live? Did they belong to the same tennis club? Did she see him once a month? Once a week? Once a day? Had they ever been engaged to each other?If he had been brutal to Ethel he was like a dog with a bone over poor Margaret, and after ten minutes or so she was white-faced too, and holding on to the edge of the table. Ralph was barely able to contain himself, but the little man almost growled at any interruption. “I will have the truth. I will have the truth!” he cried, and he paused only when he had reduced her to tears. A sigh of relief went round the table. The Tundish lighted another cigarette. I hoped that we were nearing the end, but he started off again quite pleasantly, his anger and excitement apparently having evaporated as quickly as they had arisen.He questioned Kenneth and Ralph and then me again, and at the end of his questions, I think that there was nothing in connection with our friendship with the Hansons, or our knowledge of one another that he didn’t know.“And now about the key of Miss Palfreeman’s bedroom,” he said, looking at the doctor, when he had satisfied himself that he could extract no more information from me. “What made you lie about it to Mr. Jeffcock?”“I beg your pardon, I did not lie,” The Tundish replied with twinkling eyes.“You are prepared to swear, then, that you left the door unfastened with the key in the lock?”“I certainly left the door unlocked. I know nothing about the key.”“And yet when Dr. Jeffries went up-stairs the door was locked and the key to it gone.”“So I understand.”“Some one must have locked it, you know.”“Why, yes, certainly.”“And you still ask me to believe that you didn’t?”“I can only repeat that I didn’t.”I was sitting next to Allport and at right angles to him round the table corner. I felt his foot pressing gently against my leg, and I looked up at him in surprise. Kenneth sat directly opposite to me and the little man was turned toward him, a malicious smile on his ugly clever face.“And you didn’t lock the door by any chance, I suppose, Mr. Dane?” His foot pressed hard against my leg again, and I suddenly realized that he could not reach my foot but that he sat perched in his chair like a child with his tiny legs a-dangle.“Good lord, no!” Kenneth said. “Whatever makes you ask me that?”“Oh, only because I happened to find the key in your bedroom underneath the pillow.” He gave my leg another little dig to remind me again of the promise I had made him on the landing when the inspector brought him the key that had been found in the doctor’s pocket.I must always reflect with shame on what followed, but I think that to some extent the heat of the room and the misery of all we had been through must have thrown us off our balance. We had gone beyond the limit of our endurance.There was a deathlike silence after Allport had made his startling, and to my knowledge alone, untruthful statement. Kenneth was too taken aback to speak. His jaw dropped open in his astonishment. He might have seen a ghost. A wasp flew in through one of the open windows and buzzed angrily over our heads, and I remember thinking to myself, “Lord, here’s another wasp.” Then Ethel gave a little half-hysterical titter, and there must have been something infectious in its quality, for Margaret followed suit with a high hysterical laugh, and before I knew what had happened, and I swear without any conscious effort of my own, I was laughing at him too. Ralph joined in, and there we sat round the table like mad people. It was unspeakably horrible and grotesque—murder and misery and death in the air, and the four of us locked in the grip of helpless laughter. Margaret’s was true hysteria—peal of shrill horror followed peal. Ralph rumbled out a deep bass, and I shook helplessly in my chair, the tears streaming down my cheeks. Allport sat at one end of the table, his diminutive face puckered up into a disapproving frown, The Tundish at the other, placid and unconcerned.Kenneth went white as death and then the blood rushed back, flooding his face with an angry crimson as he rose slowly and unsteadily to his feet. “You lie, you lie,” he gasped in a low voice husky with rage. “You put it there, you murderous bloody cad,” he shouted furiously, pointing a shaking hand at the doctor. Then before we realized what he was about or could do anything to stop him, he turned round and picking up his chair by the back he swung it over his head and hurled it down the table.He was strong and his uncontrollable rage added to his strength. The chair hit the table a foot or two in front of The Tundish, who instinctively put up a hand to ward it off. The back caught his lifted arm, and the weight of the heavy leather-covered seat swung it round as if it were on a pivot, one of the legs catching Ethel as it swiveled round, with terrific force, straight across the mouth. There was a startled cry and a flash of blood. The chair crashed to the floor between them. The Tundish jumped to his feet in a second, and half led, half carried her out of the room.Kenneth stood rigid, his face still scarlet, his rage still holding him, “You turned it on her, you poisoning cad,” he yelled, as the doctor vanished through the door. Then he seemed suddenly to regain control and added in a low voice, “My God, what have I done?”Allport sprang to his side and dragged him down into his chair. “You had better sit down there, my friend,” he said, and then, turning to me, he asked me to go and see if the doctor wanted any help.I ran along to the consulting-room to find Ethel flat on her back on the couch, and The Tundish bending over her. “Ah, thanks, Jeffcock,” he said as I came up to them, “I want a little help.”I fetched him basin and water and cotton wool, and he was soon at work with his deft and steady fingers. There was something bordering on the unnatural in his unruffled calm. It was not only that he was undisturbed, but it was the idea he gave of hidden reserves that impressed me so much. Nothing, I felt, in heaven or earth, natural or supernatural, could move this quiet, pleasant man, and as I watched him tenderly at work, I remembered the fearful danger he was in. I pictured him actually on the scaffold—the rope about his neck—the hangman ready to pull the fatal bolt and drop him to God alone knows where. My fancy even led me to the length of wondering how he would stand. With folded arms and bended head? No, too melodramatic that. Smoking a cigarette perhaps? No again, that would savor too much of braggadocio. Finally I decided that he would in all probability be blowing his nose.I suppose that my little flight of ghoulish fancy can not have lasted for more than a second or so, but he looked up at me amused, almost as though he had guessed whither my thoughts had wandered. “Come, Jeffcock, you had better go back and tell them there isn’t very much amiss. They will be anxious, you know. A badly cut lip, and a couple of loosened teeth are the extent of the damage.”He was sitting on the edge of the couch, and as I closed the door behind me, I heard Ethel whisper softly, “Oh, Tundish dear, what a rock you are. What should I do without you?”Was it my fancy? Had my hearing for once played me false? Or did he really reply, “Well, why should you, Ethel darling?”
“No one has found the key, I suppose?” was Allport’s first question as soon as Miss Summerson had shut the door. “The maid would have reported it if she had found it when she swept out the dispensary this morning, I suppose, Miss Hanson?”
“Yes, but if you like I will go and ask to make sure,” Ethel replied.
“No, don’t bother to do that.”
Then, after a pause, he asked, “And which of you were in the dispensary last night after Miss Summerson locked the cupboard at three o’clock? Were you?” He asked each of us the question individually in turn, and it transpired that Ethel and The Tundish alone had passed from the hall into the dispensary itself, though I had been in the consulting-room at the time of the accident to the boy.
I began to think that the inquiry would be a lengthy one if each question were to be repeated so monotonously, but he seemed to take an enormous interest in our replies, and to wait with a kind of ghoulish excitement after each, “And were you?” as though he were hoping to catch us in the admission of an indiscretion. I have often thought of that hour in the stifling dining-room at Dalehouse as the most tense and exciting of my experience. The little man, seated at the end of the table, was angrily determined to search out the truth. In deadly earnest he looked at each speaker as one by one we answered his numerous questions, but he found time to glance swiftly round the table now and again to see what impression this question or that had made on the rest of us—then back again, like some hawk with its prey. While he seemed to have no method or order in framing his questions it soon occurred to me that a great many of them were put, not so much for the purpose of getting any answer, or even information, but rather to see what the effect of the question itself on the rest of us might be.
The doctor sat bland and impassive through it all. Nothing disturbed him. His replies came out suave and sure. Never once did he hesitate; not once did he give the impression of being on the defensive. And I think it was this quality in his replies that rather accentuated the feelings of all of us as we sat unhappily round the table. To Ethel, I feel sure, and to me as well, his calm and his dignity were splendid. To Kenneth, I am equally sure, they were nothing but an additional proof of guilt. I could gage his every thought—no one but a villain could keep thus collected in the face of such suspicion—innocence, surely, would have shown more concern. And Ethel, how could she? She seemed to hang on the doctor’s every word. From him to Allport, as answer followed question, she turned her pretty head—hurt when the questions were brutal and direct, proud and glad for the dignified reply. He a murderer, a poisoner, and she the girl whom he loved—I believe his soul was sick with jealousy.
And Margaret and Ralph, I could see, thought him guilty too—but they were more aloof—they did not condemn and they had some sort of feeling of pity.
There we sat through a long, long hour, the blinds drawn against the streaming sun, the pleasant garden noises coming in through the open windows. The clock ticked the time slowly and leisurely away, and once there was the sound of tramping feet on the stairs, as they carried Stella’s body down to take it to the mortuary. The room was at fever heat and our pulses raced as Allport tortured us each in turn.
“And your key, Dr. Wallace, where do you keep it?”
“Here in my waistcoat pocket.”
“Not a very safe place surely?”
“I have always found it so.”
“You are sure it has not been out of your possession?”
“Yes, I could swear to that.”
“What do you do with it at night?”
“I don’t do anything with it. I leave it in the pocket.”
“And you really think it safe to carry a key of such importance loose in your waistcoat pocket?”
“Yes, I think it is as safe there as it would be anywhere else.”
“Humph, and now I want you to tell me about these,” taking out his pocketbook and unfolding the notice The Tundish had printed and the two duplicates he and I had printed later on at breakfast.
He turned to the doctor for information and was told in detail about the practical joke, about our conversation in the garden, and about Kenneth’s inquiry at the breakfast table. The Tundish spoke simply and to the point, omitting nothing, not even our arrangement to lie like troopers in our efforts to mystify the rest.
“Humph, it all sounds rather extraordinary, you know, Doctor, not what I should have expected of you somehow. I take it there was no ulterior motive?”
“No, it was a practical joke and nothing more.”
“You don’t think it necessary to tell the truth then, I gather, on every occasion?”
“No, I don’t,” The Tundish answered pleasantly. “Come now, Mr. Allport, you know that that is not quite a fair implication. I maintain that any one might have arranged the joke, and then have agreed to bluff it out as Mr. Jeffcock and I did. You might just as reasonably call a man a liar and a cheat because he was fond of a game of poker.”
But Allport took no notice of his protest and turned to Kenneth. “You, I understand, conducted this inquiry. The doctor has confessed that he was responsible for the notice and for the disturbed beds. How was it that you failed to find him out? What did you find out?”
“We came to no definite conclusion at all, but I wasn’t then aware that the doctor and Mr. Jeffcock only tell the truth when it happens to suit them,” Kenneth answered with an ugly sneer. “We were divided, but we all felt sure that it was one of the two. I think it is rather significant, however, that Dr. Wallace took good care to point out in great detail that any one of us had the opportunity to be alone up-stairs at some time or other during the evening without being missed. He went out of his way to prove it, and now I know why,” he added, turning to the doctor with a scowl.
Ethel half sobbed, “Oh, how abominable of you,” but Allport would brook no interruption, and rapped the table with his knuckles directly she opened her mouth.
“You think he stressed the point?” he asked, turning once more to Kenneth.
“Yes, I do.”
“And what have you got to say about it, Mr. Jeffcock?”
I replied that I considered that The Tundish had made an entirely accurate statement about the whole affair, and that while I agreed with Kenneth that it was he who had pointed out that we all had the chance of doing it, it was in my opinion the natural outcome of our plot to confuse the rest, and that I could not agree that any particular emphasis had been given to the point.
I was surprised to see that Allport paid really serious attention to Kenneth’s horrible suggestion. He sat frowning, drawing little squares and designs in a note-book he had placed on the table before him when the inquiry began, and in which from time to time he had jotted something down, while we sat round the table watching and anxiously waiting for what he would say.
“Yes, I think it is rather important,” he said at length, looking up from his book and down the table to where The Tundish sat facing him, his chair tilted back and his knees against the table edge. “Would you mind repeating the arguments you used?”
“But I’ve already admitted that it was I who stuck up the notice and played the silly practical jokes.”
“Yes, you have, Doctor, but that is not the point. The implication is that first you poisoned Miss Palfreeman, then you played the practical joke, as you call it, and that at breakfast time this morning you went out of your way to prove that any of the rest of the party also had the opportunity to play the joke, in order to establish it clearly beforehand that any one of you could have added the poison to the sleeping draft as well. Now please repeat, as nearly word for word as you can, what you said at breakfast time that has caused these strange and unpleasant fancies to come to Mr. Dane.”
At first I thought the doctor was going to refuse—he seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second—and then, leaning forward with his elbows on the table, he repeated the bantering arguments he had adopted earlier in the day. He not only repeated the words, but he seemed to create the atmosphere of the earlier scene as well. He put the clock back somehow. We were all sitting round the breakfast table again and he was teasing Kenneth—I could almost smell the coffee and the bacon.
Even little Allport was impressed. “Yes, that certainly sounds realistic, and innocent enough,” he laughed, but he went over it all again, nevertheless, pausing to make notes in his book, and asking each of us in turn to corroborate the statements the doctor had made. It was ultimately established that he had given Annie the medicine to take up-stairs immediately before he joined the other five—Stella, Margaret, Ethel and the two boys—in the dining-room for supper. I had been alone up-stairs while I changed, and could have added the poison either then, or later, when as a matter of fact I was wandering about in the garden just prior to the accident. Kenneth and Ralph had been together the whole evening—at least so they both said. It transpired that the two had gone to a neighboring hotel for a drink, an admission they made with some little shame, pleading the heat as their excuse. Hanson, I should explain, is rather a strict teetotaler and alcoholic drinks are taboo at Dalehouse. Ethel was alone in the surgery wing for about ten minutes after the accident, clearing up the mess. Margaret had been left by herself in the basement all the time that Ethel was occupied up-stairs.
Having sorted out all our movements to his satisfaction, and having completed his notes about them, he got up and rang the bell at the side of the fireplace behind him. When Annie appeared to answer it, he surprised us all by asking her whether the little heap of washing he had noticed on the dresser, when he had searched the basement, was the clothes that had been ironed the night before, and whether they had yet been put away.
“No, sir, they’re still on the dresser.”
“Fetch them.”
She brought them and put them before him on the table, and he turned them over one by one, including the undergarments about which Ethel and Margaret had both been so modest. “It certainly does not look like a two hours’ job even allowing for the iron and the accident—I agree with you there, Doctor—not on piece-work pay anyhow,” he concluded as he came to the socks at the bottom of the pile.
“But where is the brother to this?” he asked sharply, holding up an odd sock that I recognized as one of mine. It was marked on the inside and he noticed it at once. “F. H. J.; which of you two ladies ironed Mr. Jeffcock’s socks?”
We all looked at Ethel and Margaret, and they at each other. Neither of them spoke and then they both began to speak at once. “You did, I thi——”
Finally, though neither of them seemed very certain about it, it was agreed that probably Ethel had ironed that particular pair, though she denied most emphatically having either brought the odd sock up-stairs, or put it away. The Tundish agreed that she had not brought it up with her from the basement by accident, when he called for her to help him with the boy, and both Annie and cook on being called and questioned asserted that they had neither of them touched it. At length Allport gave up in disgust his attempt to locate it, and picking up the heap of clothes, threw them angrily into one of the armchairs that stood at the side of the fireplace.
Having done so, he seemed to make a new start, and turned to me. “Now I want you to tell me honestly, Mr. Jeffcock, weren’t you just a little surprised when the doctor told you what he had done? Didn’t you think it rather peculiar that a man of his age and position should play tricks of that description?”
I had to confess that I had.
“And what made you add what you did to the notice—‘Dark deeds are done at night’?”
“I don’t know why I made the addition.”
“But it seems to me such a peculiar thing that you should have picked on those words. Did you know then that the bedrooms had been upset?”
“No.”
“Did you know that Miss Palfreeman was dead when you made the addition?”
“No, we none of us knew till breakfast time this morning.”
“Possibly not—possibly one of you did.”
I could have twisted his ugly little neck.
“You knew that Dr. Wallace had lived in China?”
“Yes.”
“And Miss Palfreeman?”
Now I had been wondering whether I ought to disclose the conversation between Stella and The Tundish that I had overheard, and whether I was right or wrong, I don’t know, but I had made up my mind that I would say nothing about it—at any rate for the present.
In the first place, it seemed to me that if it were deceitful of me to keep my knowledge from the police, it would be still more dishonest to tell them what I had heard. It was a private and confidential conversation, which quite unwittingly I had been able to overhear by reason of my abnormal powers. I had promised Allport to keep nothing relevant hidden, along with the rest, including The Tundish, but how was I to know that it was really relevant? Might I not have misinterpreted what I did hear? Those gaps in Stella’s speech, in how many different ways could they not be filled? Again, was it my business or part of my undertaking to report half-heard remarks? If it had been something to do with Stella’s death, then surely it was a matter for The Tundish, and he, God knows, was heavily enough involved without my going out of my way to add to his burden by ranging myself at the side of Kenneth.
And so, right or wrong, I decided to keep the overheard conversation to myself, but I did not quite realize that my resolve would necessitate the lie direct. I soon found out, however, that it did, and that as soon as I had told the first I had to back it with another.
“I don’t know whether she knew it or not,” I ventured, in reply to his question, after a moment’s hesitation.
“Please don’t play with me, sir!” the little man almost shouted. “You know perfectly well that I was asking if you knew that Miss Palfreeman had lived in China.”
“No, I don’t know that!”
“That I was asking if you knew that Miss Palfreeman had lived in China?”
“No, that she had ever lived in China,” I lied as boldly as I could.
“Did you know that they had quarreled?”
“No,” I lied again.
He stared at me and I was not surprised, for even to me it had sounded too loud a denial and somehow unconvincing. He continued to stare, and I could feel the questioning glances of the rest, as I kept my gaze defiantly on his, but he made no further comment.
“Perhaps you will tell us about it, Doctor?”
“No, I don’t think I shall,” The Tundish replied pleasantly. “All I can tell you is this. Miss Palfreeman’s father was in Shanghai for two years while I was resident there. He was representing the Foreign Office in a political mission. We became acquainted and our acquaintance grew into friendship. Then we quarreled. In fact it was largely on account of our quarrel that I left China when I did. But I never at any time had any difference or quarrel with Miss Palfreeman. She naturally enough took her father’s side in our dispute. I don’t know whether she knew any of the facts—the facts, I mean, from her father’s view-point. Of the true facts only myself and one other were ever aware. Anyhow, she quite incorrectly thought that I ruined her father, and she disliked me accordingly. We only referred to the matter once during her visit here, and that was on the evening before her death, when I tried to persuade her to forgive the past. Her father committed suicide, but if necessary I can prove conclusively that I had nothing whatever to do with the trouble that came to him. All I can tell you now is that I made a certain solemn promise that I intend to keep. That promise makes it impossible for me to tell you more than I have already.”
“We are to accept your word for it then, Doctor, that this time, at any rate, you are telling the truth?” the detective sneered.
“That, I must leave to your own discretion,” The Tundish answered with a pleasant smile, quite impervious to the little man’s insinuations.
Then there followed a battle royal between the two of them, and the ugly little spitfire was for a full ten minutes persuasive, cutting, rude, and threatening in turn, but the doctor sat unmoved through it all. He refused even to answer “Yes” or “No” to the many leading questions that were put to him, and beyond saying that he had no idea that Miss Palfreeman was the girl he had known in Shanghai until he met her at the club, and that she was about eighteen years old when he returned to England, he replied, “I have nothing more to say” to every question.
Eventually Allport gave up the unequal contest and turned his attention to Ethel. How long had she known Dr. Wallace? Did she know that he knew Stella before she asked her to stay at Dalehouse for the tournament? Some of his questions were brutal, I thought, and seemed to be framed with a view to causing the maximum of annoyance, and I felt that it was only the realization of the danger in which the doctor stood that made her able to bear the ordeal.
“I understand you are engaged to be married to Mr. Dane?”
“No.”
“No? But I certainly understood that you were.”
Ethel crimsoned and was silent, and Kenneth burst out with an angry, “But I say, that can’t have anything to do with Miss Palfreeman’s death.”
Allport held up his fat podgy little hand in angry protest. “That you must please leave for me to decide. Either you must answer my questions or we must deal with the matter in a more formal manner.” This he said with a threatening glance at the doctor.
There was silence, and he continued.
“Come now, Miss Hanson, why did you break off your engagement?”
Poor Ethel was very near to tears, but she started her answer bravely. “We differed over Dr. Wallace—Mr. Dane objected—oh! But I can’t tell you.” It was too much for her and she put her elbows on the table and buried her face in her hands. It was all ghastly, and I felt that a public inquiry could not be worse than these intimate exposures. But Allport was immovable, inexorable.
“You are very fond of Dr. Wallace, then?”
Ethel nodded, but did not look up.
“Very fond? Does that mean you are in love with him?”
“No,” she whispered.
I could bear it no longer. “Murder or no murder,” I said, “you’ve no right to ask questions like that.”
Allport held up his hands in despair. “You don’t understand—you simply can’t understand the position you are all of you in. Yes, all of you. Suppose Dr. Wallace were brought to trial, what sort of questions do you imagine the counsel for the defense would ask you? Isn’t it better to talk to me here privately? You don’t imagine I enjoy this kind of thing, I suppose?”
I heard Kenneth mutter, “I’m not so sure of that,” but The Tundish pacified him with a genial:
“Yes, Mr. Allport, you are right of course, but you can’t expect us to enjoy it very much either. I am sure you had better tell him anything you can,” he concluded, turning to Ethel.
“But you are not willing to follow your own advice, Doctor?” Allport snapped.
“I told you all I was at liberty to tell you. I didn’t resent any of your questions.”
The little detective shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, then, Miss Hanson, I’m to understand that you broke off your engagement with Mr. Dane because you differed from him over this unfortunate affair, and that you are very fond of the doctor here, but that you are not in love with him. Is that correct?”
“I suppose it’s near enough,” Ethel whispered.
“Now I want you to answer this very carefully. Had you noticed anything between the doctor and Miss Palfreeman? Had you any reason at all to suspect that while she disliked the doctor, he might have had other feelings with regard to her?”
“No. It’s quite absurd. He hardly knew her.”
“Pardon me, he has just informed us that for two years her father was one of his most intimate friends. You are not asking me to believe that he hardly knew the daughter, who was eighteen at the time?”
Then leaning over the table, and speaking very slowly, he asked her, “Did you know where the Chinese poison was kept? Exactly which bottle it was in, I mean?”
“Yes.”
“And roughly what its action was?”
“Yes.”
“So that if you had found the key Miss Summerson says she lost, you would have had no difficulty in getting at it and using it in—the—way—it—has—been—used?”
“No, I suppose not,” Ethel replied bravely but going as white as a sheet.
Next he turned quite suddenly to Margaret. “And, what were the papers you burned in your bedroom grate, Miss Hunter?”
“I didn’t burn any papers.”
“Oh! Please think carefully now. Surely you did burn something. I found the charred pieces there, myself, and Annie has told me she cleaned out the grate only the morning before. What was it that you burned?”
“I didn’t burn anything.”
“Not a photograph, for instance?”
“I didn’t burn anything at all. I really didn’t.”
“Then you expect me to believe that some one else went into your room for the purpose of burning paper in that particular grate?”
Margaret made no reply to this, and Allport went on to question her closely about where she had lived in Sheffield. At which school had she taught? Why did she leave it? Did she have to work for her living? Then there followed a whole string of rapid questions concerning her previous knowledge of Ralph. How far apart did they live? Did they belong to the same tennis club? Did she see him once a month? Once a week? Once a day? Had they ever been engaged to each other?
If he had been brutal to Ethel he was like a dog with a bone over poor Margaret, and after ten minutes or so she was white-faced too, and holding on to the edge of the table. Ralph was barely able to contain himself, but the little man almost growled at any interruption. “I will have the truth. I will have the truth!” he cried, and he paused only when he had reduced her to tears. A sigh of relief went round the table. The Tundish lighted another cigarette. I hoped that we were nearing the end, but he started off again quite pleasantly, his anger and excitement apparently having evaporated as quickly as they had arisen.
He questioned Kenneth and Ralph and then me again, and at the end of his questions, I think that there was nothing in connection with our friendship with the Hansons, or our knowledge of one another that he didn’t know.
“And now about the key of Miss Palfreeman’s bedroom,” he said, looking at the doctor, when he had satisfied himself that he could extract no more information from me. “What made you lie about it to Mr. Jeffcock?”
“I beg your pardon, I did not lie,” The Tundish replied with twinkling eyes.
“You are prepared to swear, then, that you left the door unfastened with the key in the lock?”
“I certainly left the door unlocked. I know nothing about the key.”
“And yet when Dr. Jeffries went up-stairs the door was locked and the key to it gone.”
“So I understand.”
“Some one must have locked it, you know.”
“Why, yes, certainly.”
“And you still ask me to believe that you didn’t?”
“I can only repeat that I didn’t.”
I was sitting next to Allport and at right angles to him round the table corner. I felt his foot pressing gently against my leg, and I looked up at him in surprise. Kenneth sat directly opposite to me and the little man was turned toward him, a malicious smile on his ugly clever face.
“And you didn’t lock the door by any chance, I suppose, Mr. Dane?” His foot pressed hard against my leg again, and I suddenly realized that he could not reach my foot but that he sat perched in his chair like a child with his tiny legs a-dangle.
“Good lord, no!” Kenneth said. “Whatever makes you ask me that?”
“Oh, only because I happened to find the key in your bedroom underneath the pillow.” He gave my leg another little dig to remind me again of the promise I had made him on the landing when the inspector brought him the key that had been found in the doctor’s pocket.
I must always reflect with shame on what followed, but I think that to some extent the heat of the room and the misery of all we had been through must have thrown us off our balance. We had gone beyond the limit of our endurance.
There was a deathlike silence after Allport had made his startling, and to my knowledge alone, untruthful statement. Kenneth was too taken aback to speak. His jaw dropped open in his astonishment. He might have seen a ghost. A wasp flew in through one of the open windows and buzzed angrily over our heads, and I remember thinking to myself, “Lord, here’s another wasp.” Then Ethel gave a little half-hysterical titter, and there must have been something infectious in its quality, for Margaret followed suit with a high hysterical laugh, and before I knew what had happened, and I swear without any conscious effort of my own, I was laughing at him too. Ralph joined in, and there we sat round the table like mad people. It was unspeakably horrible and grotesque—murder and misery and death in the air, and the four of us locked in the grip of helpless laughter. Margaret’s was true hysteria—peal of shrill horror followed peal. Ralph rumbled out a deep bass, and I shook helplessly in my chair, the tears streaming down my cheeks. Allport sat at one end of the table, his diminutive face puckered up into a disapproving frown, The Tundish at the other, placid and unconcerned.
Kenneth went white as death and then the blood rushed back, flooding his face with an angry crimson as he rose slowly and unsteadily to his feet. “You lie, you lie,” he gasped in a low voice husky with rage. “You put it there, you murderous bloody cad,” he shouted furiously, pointing a shaking hand at the doctor. Then before we realized what he was about or could do anything to stop him, he turned round and picking up his chair by the back he swung it over his head and hurled it down the table.
He was strong and his uncontrollable rage added to his strength. The chair hit the table a foot or two in front of The Tundish, who instinctively put up a hand to ward it off. The back caught his lifted arm, and the weight of the heavy leather-covered seat swung it round as if it were on a pivot, one of the legs catching Ethel as it swiveled round, with terrific force, straight across the mouth. There was a startled cry and a flash of blood. The chair crashed to the floor between them. The Tundish jumped to his feet in a second, and half led, half carried her out of the room.
Kenneth stood rigid, his face still scarlet, his rage still holding him, “You turned it on her, you poisoning cad,” he yelled, as the doctor vanished through the door. Then he seemed suddenly to regain control and added in a low voice, “My God, what have I done?”
Allport sprang to his side and dragged him down into his chair. “You had better sit down there, my friend,” he said, and then, turning to me, he asked me to go and see if the doctor wanted any help.
I ran along to the consulting-room to find Ethel flat on her back on the couch, and The Tundish bending over her. “Ah, thanks, Jeffcock,” he said as I came up to them, “I want a little help.”
I fetched him basin and water and cotton wool, and he was soon at work with his deft and steady fingers. There was something bordering on the unnatural in his unruffled calm. It was not only that he was undisturbed, but it was the idea he gave of hidden reserves that impressed me so much. Nothing, I felt, in heaven or earth, natural or supernatural, could move this quiet, pleasant man, and as I watched him tenderly at work, I remembered the fearful danger he was in. I pictured him actually on the scaffold—the rope about his neck—the hangman ready to pull the fatal bolt and drop him to God alone knows where. My fancy even led me to the length of wondering how he would stand. With folded arms and bended head? No, too melodramatic that. Smoking a cigarette perhaps? No again, that would savor too much of braggadocio. Finally I decided that he would in all probability be blowing his nose.
I suppose that my little flight of ghoulish fancy can not have lasted for more than a second or so, but he looked up at me amused, almost as though he had guessed whither my thoughts had wandered. “Come, Jeffcock, you had better go back and tell them there isn’t very much amiss. They will be anxious, you know. A badly cut lip, and a couple of loosened teeth are the extent of the damage.”
He was sitting on the edge of the couch, and as I closed the door behind me, I heard Ethel whisper softly, “Oh, Tundish dear, what a rock you are. What should I do without you?”
Was it my fancy? Had my hearing for once played me false? Or did he really reply, “Well, why should you, Ethel darling?”